By GustavoLeao / 05:01, 15 February 2013 / Trek Books

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Interview by Patrick Hayes

TrekWeb talks to fan favorite comic book artist Joe Corroney regading his work on IDW Star Trek line of comic books and other subjects.

TrekWeb: How were you approached for Hive?

Joe Corroney: My editor, Scott Dunbier, at IDW Publishing, actually contacted me last year and asked if I would be interested in illustrating this series for them. I had already been drawing for IDW's Trek comics since they got the license back in 2007, so I had been working with my editor for a while. I've really been enjoying working on other various series with him over the years, mostly covers and some interior work more recently. I think he enjoyed the pages I drew for him on the Star Trek Ongoing series and we also worked together extensively on the True Blood comics before that so I seemed like a good fit for Star Trek: Hive.

TW: Your covers for this series are so detailed. Are you given specific instructions on what to do, or are you given free reign?

JC: It's always a collaborative process to some degree with my editor and the writers but sometimes I'm given a lot of free reign on cover art, or maybe I'm just given some basic notes, or maybe a plot outline for the series or something. But the writers for Hive had some great, specific ideas for at least three of the covers, which actually made my job drawing them that much easier. Originally, the idea was to have the art for Cover #2 be the art for Cover #1. But for my fourth cover sketch I came up with more of a movie poster composition that wasn't really issue specific and I felt that it worked better to start off the series with that one as the cover art to issue #1 instead. My editor and the writers agreed with me though the second issue cover still proved to be really popular with everyone too. The writers ended up buying the original art from me for to display in their offices in L.A. which was pretty cool. I'm glad we used it for issue #2 though because the first issue cover art we went with just feels more like a movie poster for the series and really represents the series as whole, whereas the other covers are more scene specific to each issue.

TW: How detailed are the scripts from Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett? I ask because the little details in your art, such as the Borg King holding a scepter that's got the Borg logo on it from the first page of Hive, are quite meticulous details.

JC: The scripts by Terry, Travis and Brannon Braga were extremely well-written, they were just so well paced and contained lots of great information and ideas for the visuals. I really try to more or less nail what the writers are hoping for but they also gave me room to conceptualize the look of new characters and environments visually too. In some ways, the scripts were very epic and so ambitious with some pretty extreme visuals which I either had to reign in with my art because of lack of time in the schedule or because I was trying to stay a little more consistent to the visual style of Star Trek, I think. Some of the more over the top scenes and visuals in the script regarding the Borg would work really great in the comic book storytelling format, but on the other hand they would seem a bit too extreme to me for a Star Trek story, especially with my more realistic cinematic style. So I would sometimes work with the writers via email or over the phone with Brannon to come up with a compromise and find a nice balance for some of the ideas that would fit in the world of Star Trek but still look dynamic, exciting, and really cool and hopefully get their idea across.

Specifically, with Locutus' scepter in the shape of the Borg logo, which was a really cool idea on paper and we tried it in the first issue visually, ultimately just didn't sit right with Brannon and me once we saw it on the page. We agreed that the Borg aren't materialistic, carrying objects or having effects of any nature, and the idea of them even having a "logo" or a "symbol", which is something more of a licensing thing and not a real visual you ever see in the shows or the movie, seemed out of line with the ideology of the Borg. The species just wouldn't represent themselves or their identity with some kind of logo branding. Tying in the Borg logo visually to Locutus' scepter seemed like a fun little detail at the time but by the second issue we decided to ditch it since the scepter was just more of a visual cue to establish him as the "Borg King" anyway. Though for continuity sake I did find a way to bring it back in issue #3 when Data and Locutus are fighting the Queen in the future timeline. If you look closely you'll see that Data is fighting her with Locutus' broken scepter, it's just missing the Borg symbol on the end of the staff and he ends up piercing her chest and wounding her with it. So I just repurposed it as a weapon. I imagined maybe Locutus called the scepter back to him "off screen" and it just floated back into the scene when he and Data needed it.

TW: Issue #3 had you working with two different inkers, Matt and Shawn Fillibach. How did that come about and how do you think you're doing on your pencils?

JC: Matt and Shawn helped me out on issue #2 with about 7 or 8 pages as well and they also inked about four pages in issue #4. They're really good friends of mine I've known for years who have illustrated a lot of comics for Dark Horse Comics, notably on Star Wars: Clone Wars and some of their creator owned titles. We met at Comic-Con in San Diego probably eight years or so ago, but we've never really worked together on anything. I don't think they've ever inked anyone else either besides themselves, so this was new territory for them but I knew they could pull it off because I knew their work so well. They're incredibly fast inkers, too. They have what they call an "implied line" inking style. Which means they don't ink every single line I put down, it creates a really cool positive negative effect in the line work and graphic shapes, not unlike what you would see in Frank Miller's Sin City art, for example. The three of us share very similar sensibilities as artists and as people, so our styles really mesh together pretty nicely. I was thrilled to have them helping me out on Hive.

TW: How do you think Hi-Fi has done coloring your work?

JC: I can't say enough great things about Hi-Fi, especially on this book. They brought their A game to this series and it really shows. I've known the Hi-Fi crew for a long time and Brian Miller, the head colorist at Hi-Fi, has worked with me personally for years now on all of my Star Trek artwork for IDW Publishing. So going in to this series we had a lot of experience working together already that I think really benefitted the finalized look of all the pages and covers for Hive. I really love their dramatic lighting for the Borg ship interiors and the Enterprise bridge scenes during the climactic space battles. They truly know how to enhance the drama with their color work. I really only ever want to work with Brian and his team, so I'm very glad when my editor puts us together on projects like this. Hi-Fi are the most professional colorists I've ever worked with.

TW: The Voldranall are such a bizarre life form. How much input did you have into its design?

JC: I was given a short and simple line of description in the script that they looked like something that was a cross of the monster in Cloverfield and a nightmarish H.P. Lovecraft-ian type creature, just something as ugly, horrible, and menacing looking as possible. So that really was my jumping off point. I kind of designed them like these giant, walking mutant bat creatures with tentacles, since bats kind of look like demons in a way. I wanted the Voldranall to look more demonic and animalistic than Species 8472 since I knew comparisons might possibly be drawn to them in this story. The tentacles gave them that extra alien feel they needed and a slight Cthulhu or Japanese monster feel, too. They were very fun to draw and design.

TW: Your women are gorgeous. In the first two issues you've gotten to draw Vash, Lt. Archer, and Seven of Nine. Yet it seems like you've drawn more Borg women than unaltered humans. Do you feel like you've been cheated as an artist?

JC: Not at all, I think by the end of the series you'll see I've drawn plenty of Lt. Archer and even Troi and Crusher, too. But since the Borg Queen and Seven of Nine are definitely two of the main players in the story and they're such dynamic looking characters, I certainly didn't feel cheated drawing them so often, I loved working with those characters and especially coming up with different, new transitional looks for them. Plus I was able to draw Seven of Nine in her human look a few times throughout the series.

TW: Which is more difficult for you to draw: characters well known to Trek fans or Borg characters?

JC: The Borg characters were a lot trickier to pull off, even the more established ones like Seven and the Queen. There's just so much detail and so many intricacies to their costumes, all of their tech and implants. I really had to study and research the Borg in photo reference to pull off all of their details and get them right. And just drawing so many background Borg and coming up with different implants and apparatus for their costumes wasn't always easy. I mean it was still fun just letting my imagination go and getting carried away with them but at the same time the Borg require a certain level of detail to pull them off properly and make them feel legitimate in my style.

TW: Several characters in this series have been Borgified. Is there a character you think would be interesting to draw as a Borg that this series didn't give you the opportunity to do?

JC: Well, turning someone into a Borg can be a pretty dramatic visual twist for just about any character. I actually loved drawing Data as a Borg for this series. If you look closely at the design and shape of his costume, if you were to look at it in just silhouette, you would see I based his new Borg look off of Lore, his evil brother. So that was a fun little Easter egg for me to play with from a design standpoint. A Borg version of Worf would be really fun to design. It would be exciting to make him more fierce looking.

TW: Issue #3 had Seven of Nine sprouting spider appendages. This is a fairly horrific sequence and it could have been more graphic than it was. Did you feel the need to keep it in line with what the series had done with violence, or did you just draw it as you saw fit?

JC: This was one of my favorite scenes to draw in the whole series actually. I'm a huge horror movie fan so getting to push the limits of Star Trek with some imagery like this was pretty cool. Really, the Borg themselves are pretty horrific. I mean there are elements from Best of Both Worlds and First Contact that would fit visually and metaphorically at home in a horror film. I think with the Hive, though it is a comic book series which allows for boundaries to be explored and pushed in this medium, I did feel a responsibility because it is Star Trek, like I do with any licensed property I work on, to stay true to its voice. I wanted to explore and push the envelope and make things fresh and exciting visually whenever I could but I also sought to stay true and keep things feeling familiar or tonally consistent to the identity of the property which is why fans love it to begin with. I didn't want to go too extreme in my artwork when it didn't call for it but other times it was exciting for me and even necessary to add some new layers to the mythology of Star Trek with some pretty dynamic, new visuals.

TW: Was it difficult to design Seven for that sequence? She changes into a much larger character and could swallow up the background and other people in the panel just by her size.

JC: For that particular version of Seven of Nine, where's she's evolved into the horrific spider drone creature, I actually had to tone it back a bit. In the script she was described more as a cross between a snake, spider, and scorpion type creature. She was more massive, too. I knew going in though if I made her too large that it would make for less intimacy in the dialogue scenes after she was defeated. I didn't want to keep having to pull the camera viewpoint so far out for the readers just to show off her scale, since there really weren't too many action panels of her to begin with. So I tried to compromise and keep her ominous and creepy looking, but not too monstrous so I could keep tight on all the characters whenever I could in the short scene.

TW:  Much of the second issue featured incredible full page splashes. Was this part of the script, or your gluttony for punishment?

JC: Oh those dynamic splash page scenes were definitely written in the script and honestly weren't as hard to pull off as you think. I've never drawn a comic book series with this many splash pages before, but, in fact, the splash pages required less overall design and storytelling work than the slightly more complicated four to six panel pages. Pages with more panels require more ingenuity in terms of page design and visual pacing and take longer drawing more characters and separate scenes. When I'm drawing larger panels, specifically splash pages, with large, bold characters they really go faster for me. There's just less to deal with on a splash page from a design standpoint and that just saves me a lot more time.

TW: Of special note should be your space battle sequences which are amazing. How long does it take to compose one of those scenes before you commit to penciling it?

JC: The space battles were so fun to draw and were time consuming to design but luckily I was able to pull them off with the help of Photoshop which really made those pages go faster than if I had to draw every single little ship and detail. I still had to draw a lot of those things ultimately, even digitally, but because I used Photoshop I was able to cut corners and draw them faster in the computer than I would have if I had to draw those epic space battles by hand.

TW: Your interiors/backgrounds in settings are just as detailed as your characters. In this series which has been the more difficult: the Enterprise or the Borg ship? I can see the Enterprise being difficult since every fan knows how that should look, yet the interiors of the Borg ship are new.

JC: Yeah, that's good question. In some ways the Enterprise was harder because as a fan myself I knew it had to match exactly with what was established in the films. I didn't want to deviate or make a mistake and pull the reader out of the story who are fans of Star Trek. With the Borg ship interiors, I had more leeway to explore and try some new things since it didn't have to be entirely all based on what we've seen previously in TNG. But the Borg interiors are so detailed too, and it's harder to cut corners when it comes to the Borg, whether it's the interiors of the ships, the ships themselves or the look of their characters. I'd say they both presented their own challenges and neither was really harder than the other, but they were both definitely tricky at times.

TW: Do you ever get moved by the story before you illustrate a story? Do you ever get moved by something after you've finished it? I ask this because the "big cast member" that dies in the future was very moving, story-wise and visually.

JC: Honestly, there haven't been too many comic books I've illustrated dealing with this much intense drama with such incredibly popular, well loved, and revered characters. I've created lots of emotional Star Wars art but as far as comics go, this was definitely the most demanding and epic, emotionally moving story for me to draw. When I read the script for Hive it was a bit intimidating at first. I knew going in the stakes were going to be high for these characters and this would demand a lot of energy and emotion from me as an illustrator. As I was drawing it this became more and more evident for me, especially in the final issue.

TW: I have to ask you about your two issues of the monthly series you illustrated for "Operation: Annihilate." The creatures were very 1950's retro. They reminded me of something Wally Wood would have drawn at EC Comics. How did their design come about?

JC: If I remember correctly, in Mike Johnson's script, they were described as just being less cartoonish and cheesy looking like they did in the original Star Trek episode. The creatures already had a simple design so it didn't take much to just add a few more details to make them look a little more animated and threatening. I think I just redesigned them on the fly, but that's something I'm used to as a comic book artist and especially after drawing so many creatures for Star Wars and Star Trek all of these years.

TW:  In that story you got to bring back George Kirk. Did drawing such a well known, albeit briefly seen, character create any apprehension or special demands of you?

JC: I didn't dwell too much on it really. I knew the character was important in the Kirk mythos of Trek but there just isn't time in the world of drawing comic books to be intimidated about anything. If there was I would never get anything drawn since my style is usually pretty detailed and meticulous to begin with and that already takes up too much time. I just tried to do the character justice in my drawing and design of his look and make him as appealing as possible to the readers in service of the story.

TW:  Spock's quarters contained his harp and ceremonial Vulcan bells. If you had a chance to draw Kirk's quarters, are there any objects you would have to place in there?

JC: I liked including those little Easter eggs for the fans, especially the fans of the Original Series. I don't really remember too many props from Kirk's quarters in the old show. There was the computer desk and the potted plant, some statues, and small relics. I'm not sure what else. Nothing that really stands out and identifies his character like the Vulcan props did for Spock. I'm not sure what I would add to Kirk's quarters to update it for the new film version. Maybe a photo-hologram of Abraham Lincoln or a mounted Gorn head on the wall above his bed? Just kidding about that second one.

TW:  You've contributed some work for Federation: The First 150 Years, which came out in December. How did you get involved in that project?

JC: I believe my friend and frequent Star Trek author Scott Tipton referred my name to the publisher, Becker and Mayer! Books, since he was already writing for them on another Star Trek project. Then I got a call from the art director on Federation asking if I would be interested in contributing for the project and it ended up working out for my schedule. Originally I was asked to do even more pieces but I was juggling other projects at the time so we had to split up some of the pieces to the other artists. What I didn't even know at the time was that the other artists, Cat Staggs, Jeff Carlisle, and Mark McHaley, who are friends of mine in the industry were working on the book, too. All four of us have worked pretty extensively on Star Wars over the years as well. I think we were all working in secret and didn't realize we were all working on the same project until it was published. So that was kind of funny and surreal but Federation turned out so great, and I was really proud to be a part of the project. My fellow artists on the book really knocked it out of the park.

TW: Were you given a list of things to illustrate for the book or was any part of it up for grabs?

JC: I was assigned a lot of the "field guide" pieces mainly by the art director. Lots of black and white sketches for the book that were meant to look like rough drawings in a historical, real world context, as if the author of the book was sketching them himself.

TW: Were the images you made for this book just pencils or were they also inked? It's hard to tell since the line work is so sharp.

JC: Most of the pieces were done in pencil, though I was given some black and white pieces to illustrate that required more of a hard, inked line approach because they were technical illustrations of ships. But the rest of the pieces I drew were in pencil and a bit more loose in the rendering style.

TW: There's a great nod to Gene Roddenberry that you got to include in the book. Did you go into that illustration intending to draw that iconic, yet never seen, character that way?

JC: Yes, that was definitely the intention and the idea came from the writer on the book or maybe CBS themselves, I'm not sure. But the idea was passed down to me by my art director to include that nod to Gene Roddenberry in my art for that piece. I enjoyed drawing that one a lot because of that.

TW: Without giving too much away about the illustration, your "propaganda" poster on Page 74 is really cool and funny. You've been doing posters like this as Variant covers for IDW's monthly series. Can we look forward to you doing more of these?

JC: Thanks! I'm glad you liked that piece. That was a lot of fun to illustrate with my colorist Brian Miller. I did some propaganda style posters previously for Star Wars before like I did the ones for Star Trek on the new ongoing comic book series. But I'm not sure if IDW or CBS even saw those when they approached me to create some propaganda posters for the comic. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was like, "Hey, no problem. I already did this for Star Wars before and I can come up with some for Star Trek," and they were like, "Oh really? That's even better." So it was just one of these serendipitous projects that worked out nicely for me and then months later I got the assignment to do one for Federation. I think this time though my art director on Federation saw my previous Trek propaganda poster art and came up with the idea of doing one for the book.

I'm not planning on doing any more for Trek currently unless I get an assignment from a publisher that requires me to do so, but I am working on some new propaganda poster art for Star Wars.

TW: Is there any Trek character or alien you haven't drawn that you'd like to?

JC: I've worked pretty extensively with all of the main characters from The Original Series and The Next Generation and recently some of the characters from Star Trek: Voyager for Hive. I haven't really drawn too many characters from Deep Space Nine, though. I drew some of them years ago for Last Unicorn Games Star Trek role-playing game but that was back in 1998 to 1999. I'd probably enjoy working with those characters more sometime but honestly I'm more of an Original Series and TNG fan and after drawing for those series so often over the years I feel like I've covered most of my bases. I would like to draw more for the Trek reboot series though. I enjoyed drawing the new versions of the characters a lot for the comics.

TW: What are your hopes for Star Trek: Into Darkness?

JC: I'm hoping for it to be even better than the 2009 reboot, which I loved a lot. But I have no worries since I'm a huge JJ Abrams fan and he's never disappointed me yet with any of his film or television projects. I know he and the writers have definitely upped the ante for the drama and excitement in the sequel. You can really tell from the trailers for it. What I'm really hoping for is an exciting cliffhanger for the film and that we don't have to wait four years until the third one.

TW: Is there an original series story you'd like to illustrate as a "new" Trek story?

JC: I love the "Mirror, Mirror" episode and I believe IDW recently adapted that storyline for the new comics, so I missed my chance with that one. And I believe ultimately we'll be seeing some of "Space Seed" in the new movie. I think the way the screenwriters are working on the new comics is to have their interpretations of the classic episodes deviate further and further with each issue leading up to the release of the sequel as the events in the 2009 reboot movie change everything in the timeline. So by the time we get to any comics taking place after the sequel the new stories could be just about anything. Though "City on Edge of Forever" would be pretty cool to redo for the new comics. I'm not sure if they've done that one yet though.

TW: I know you're a big Star Wars fan. You've done some great Celebration Prints and several sketch cards for Topps. I'm not going to ask you to choose between Trek and Wars, instead I'd like to know if you're ever going to illustrate another Star Wars tale?

JC: I've done lots of artwork for Star Wars over the years, more than just prints and sketch cards, and I'm still working on new Star Wars artwork for Lucasfilm all time time. Books, magazines, games, and other stuff. It's been awhile since I drew a Star Wars comic book for Dark Horse and I would always really love to do more but that's up to them really. I've pursued it in the past but over the last few years I've had so much on my plate and have really been having fun trying my hand at lots of different properties and projects that I've been a big fan of. Stuff like Indiana Jones, The Lord of the Rings, Farscape, GI Joe, True Blood, The Walking Dead, even more super hero related projects for Marvel and DC and of course more Star Trek. But Star Wars and Star Trek are probably my two biggest loves and two of the biggest properties I could probably ever be involved in which makes them that much more fun for me getting to contribute to them as an artist.

TW: You worked on Stuck on Star Trek which comes out on March 13. Is there anything you could tell us about it?

JC: That was a fun project that I actually started working on way back before I started work on Federation: The First 150 Years for Becker and Mayer! Books. I worked with my friends and collaborators at Hi-Fi Colour Design on that project and they did an amazing job with it. That project was a lot of fun because it brought me back to my childhood days of playing with Colorforms and Presto Magix, if anyone remembers those. I used to draw a lot as a kid of course, but those activity books and games really inspired my imagination quite a bit too because they allowed me to relive movies and TV shows like Star Wars and Star Trek and make my own comic book type adventures in full color with backgrounds and props and so on. Nowadays kids demand much more stimulation for their imagination because of the advancements in video games and big budget filmmaking and the allure and spectacle of other multimedia. So something like Stuck on Star Trek is kind of a throw back really, it's really geared for the collector market and the fans who grew up with Star Trek already, but hopefully their kids or new Star Trek fans will get a kick out of it and find some enjoyment with it too.

TW: Thanks for talking to TrekWeb, and thanks for giving us such great art, Joe!

JC: Thanks for chatting with me! I love drawing for Star Trek, so thanks for enjoying my artwork too!

TW: If you’re interested in seeing his vast array of work, Joe has a website where you can see what he’s produced, as well as a shop where he sells books featuring his illustrations.

http://www.joecorroney.com/